Littlefinger embodied as a political party.

Cat probability: 98.3%

The interesting thing about the court is their power comes from our belief in their legitimacy. They don’t have any repercussions if the executive and legislature completely ignores their rulings.

It’s a double edged sword. If they allow this to happen, democracy crumbles under a new admin. If they do anything to deter authoritarians getting into power is technically anti-democratic too.

Either this admin undermines the belief in democracy by stopping an authoritarian administration to participate in elections or they allow the authoritarians to run and hope the electorate aren’t complete idiots (in a voting system rigged towards the authoritarians via the electoral college).

But we can’t get a database for firearms?

Hard to tell if this is a proposal to fight over hardware or an offer for free stuff.

I choose to believe the former because it makes me chuckle more.

Yay! We get to rename the drink “Irish Car Bomb” to “MAGA Tantrum”. At least something good came out of all this.

Ooo there’s a great video on Minute Food about vanilla extract vs synthetic vanilla. It basically comes down to: if you cook the vanilla, synthetic will taste the exact same, if you never heat up the vanilla it might be worth getting the real stuff.

I assume the same is probably true of most oils, if you use EVOO for salad dressings it might be worth it, but if you’re using it to saute you might as well use sunflower oil and save some money.

I understand your frustration, but unless the voting system is modified to approval or ranked choice you are probably not acting in your best interest voting for a third party. I hate that fact as much as you and I want to see it changed, but that’s the reality of the system we’re in.

Jeff Arcuri - his funniest stuff is his crowd work so he constantly has new stuff to watch.

I agree. Meditation in general - focusing on existence/experience without your mind’s narrative - would probably be good for the OP. The narrative is what is scary, because it is what’s afraid of not existing. Setting that aside can be very liberating.

True! Add do that 13 million the 13 billion years before that too!

Then it gets fun! You can think about whether you didn’t exist before the big bang! Did you not exist, or since the universe didn’t exist and you couldn’t exist can you count that as you not existing?

But then the rule that it involves tarrifs against non-FTA countries means there is a downside to it. Suddenly the utility graph has a big zone that’s below zero.

In what I was suggesting, there are no required tarrifs between the non-FTA and FTA countries. The only requirement would be that within the FTA there are no tariffs. Presumably the trade laws between a non-FTA and FTA country would remain the same, and might have a slight increase to compensate for the internal carbon tax.

I’m sure this small clarification doesn’t actually make much of a difference on your larger point. I’m clearly not a trained economist. I appreciate your response, but there are a few things over my head. Do you have good suggested reading/videos for “Network Effect Problems” or “Utility Graphs”? Or should I just search around?

Constructing economic incentives is generally more effective at driving desired actions than completely disallowing things. It also allows for ‘crowd sourcing’ the decision making process for what is low hanging fruit and what is difficult or ‘expensive’ things to change.

When people hear “free trade” they think of a system that waives all import duties, which may or may not be what is desired here. I can think of some bad actors passing a “carbon tax” just to get all the other duties on their goods dropped.

Honestly, this is exactly what I was thinking when I formulated this question. While I agree with your comprehensive list, we may not have time for that. Even a 10 or 20 year deal of a “carbon tax free trade agreement” may be all we need to course correct. If it is effective (at curbing carbon emission and as a political tool) a new FTA with the qualifications you listed could be crafted. The more qualifications, the slower nations would be to adapt/enroll and I’d be wary of adding too many if the goal is fast action now.

Bad actors’ intent matters little, as long as their actions align with world goals.

Our generation can’t fix all of the problems with the world, as much as many of us would like to. What we can try to do is give future generations the opportunity to fix what we can’t - but that requires us taking action on the climate today at the cost of our other ambitions.

I agree. The goal is fixing the planet. There are loads of problems that need fixing. Unfortunately, we need to start considering the cost of inaction. If adding some societal guarantee reduces participation in a carbon tax that is a cost the whole world has to pay in the future. If too many restrictions are added there may be no change from the status quo.

I am frustrated by the myriad of lofty goals that go nowhere. We needed action on those lofty goals yesterday. We are more desperate for it today and have to pay for that with compromises.

All valid points. Compliance would have to be a staple, which makes enforcement and oversight critical.

Where would you want the tax revenue to go in your country?

Personally, I’d be happy with a blanket tax return. Take the money generated by last year’s carbon tax, divide it by the number of tax payers, and call it a day. Since wealthy people typically have a higher carbon impact (pay more into the tax), this would average out to a small redistribution of wealth towards the less fortunate.

Countries within the FTA obviously will not want their carbon taxed products competing with ‘polluted products’. This gives countries in the FTA an incentive to place tariffs on goods produced outside the FTA. This would make it difficult or expensive to export into the FTA if a country isn’t a member. The benefits are the access to the FTA markets (more or less).

I don’t think it would, but certainly worth discussing. Countries in the FTA would have an incentive to put tariffs on products produced outside the FTA zone to bring them inline with ‘carbon taxed’ prices. These tariffs would be legal to impose until the country joins the carbon tax FTA. Countries that don’t join the FTA would (or at least could) have trouble exporting products into the FTA zone which would give them incentive to join or risk economic harm.

You wouldn’t get to pick ‘which nations’. What I’m describing would be a blanket statement: If you implement a carbon tax you can sign into this Free Trade Agreement club. Any nation in that club automatically has the same FTA with every other country.

“A Free Trade Agreement isn’t something universally good.” - Totally agree, but I think we can also agree that it would create an incentive for countries within the agreement to trade more with each other than with outsiders. It would also provide an incentive for the outside countries to join the club (specifically after it has reached some critical mass).

Industries within countries could definitely be negatively effected because of the FTA. I get that. All industry will be negatively effected if climate change isn’t curbed though. This seems like a way to make a tangible policy today that builds economic incentives for a carbon free future. It does not require full world ‘sign off’ before you start. It can start with just two countries drafting this open-invite FTA and allow any other country into the club once they’ve proven they have a carbon tax.